Development of a GIS tool to monitor access to drinking water

Accurate assessment of the rate of access to drinking water and sanitation is a challenge faced by water sector actors in Burkina Faso. A national database coupled with a GIS was developed in 2005/2006 and is updated annually. The cumbersome use of this tool and the associated procedures led us to think of an approach that could improve the evaluation method currently used by using free satellite images. To improve the level of accuracy of the assessment of the rate of access to drinking water, we recommend taking into account the habitat as the smallest spatial entity to be considered instead of the neighborhood. The identification of the habitat by satellite images requires heavy financial means because of the need to use very expensive images with very high spatial resolution. We have therefore turned to low cost solutions to try to match the level of accuracy of commercialized images in order to propose an acceptable solution.